I think people dislike dubs because they're often lower quality. People say they want to hear the emotion and tone the original actors gave the lines, although personally I find that hard to do in a language I don't speak. (I always watch dubs if they're available unless they're ridiculously bad.)

For me it's mostly habitual: I started watching subbed anime, so any cartoon in "anime style" and with japanese customs, architecture and voices feels harmonious, while everything else feels jarring. Especially the female squeaky voices (which are still as annoying as vocal fry in Western media) sound out-of-place to me in any familiar language. Except French, perhaps.I can stomach it for a couple of 'abridged' series because of all the extra humour, but that doesn't really count as dubbing methinks.

On top of that, English isn't my native language, so my choices are "foreign voices I can't understand with foreign subtitles* I can understand" or "foreign voices I can understand". I rather hear the original expressiveness and doubly translate the text, than hear the translated expressiveness and still doubly translate the text (even though it allows me to look around the scene more —then again, anime often doesn't have that much to look at).

Outside of anime, in live-action there's the issue of lips not syncing up. And for dubs to dutch there's the issue of horrible voice acting; notably Spongebob pulled it off, but more often than not it's merely a necessity for people who can't keep up with subtitles and aren't fluent enough in english.

*I refuse to believe there are good dutch subtitles for anime out there

Personally, I find subs too distracting. Even English subs on English dialogue (on by default, for the benefit of the hearing impaired, or turned on by me to get an insight into mumbled speech or when the audio is intermittently drowned out by ambient (non-show) noise that I can't control.

I think it's because my eyes are drawn to the text and away from the action. Might be similar to the test for faked blindness (of the kind approaching blindsight, where you'd expect the pupils to still dilate, etc) where the examining doctor checks the eyes whilst wearing a post-it stuck to their forehead, upon which is written a grossly insulting accusation that they are lying. The faker cannot help glancing at the post-it and reading it, even if they suppress their non-ocular response to pretend they still did not see it.

A good dub1 should work Ok enough, though liberties can be taken, for good or ill. The show Monkey/Monkey Magic, redubbed from the Japanese original 'Journey To The West', obviously was rejigged, but that's how we know the show. I recall watching Star Trek TNG on German TV, and not understanding it at all (familiar though I was with the OE episodes), but the worst part was Riker's germanic voice-double, who seemed to be straight from off the stage in Cabaret, and I don't know how it worked for the intended local audience but the discrepancy was disturbing. (Not even two sides of the same coin, those two examples, probably the same side of the same coin, but just from a different viewpoint...)

An interesting example is a UK kids' show2 called "Offcially Amazing", spiritual successor to Record Breakers and all the other Guiness World Records-affiliated shows. When dubbing the 'resident' Japanese star, they give him a (mock) North English accent, and they've used the likes of mock Zummerzet/etc when dubbing over other non-Anglophone interviewees either primarily filmed for the show or on obvious insert-clips from Italian/Chinese/etc versions of the Record Breaking show format. That's for kids, though, and subtitles might be deemed less suitable (outside of the visual asides and comic add-on visual effects) given the target audience. Which isn't someone of my age.

For anime... I still think I prefer pretending it's English all the way. Reading is distracting, and yet even when there is reading the closing credits song is often styled to be in English. Dubbed (and subtitles to Englishly-echo any important Kanji signage or other writing that hoves into shot) works best for me, and I have the advantage of a huge Anglophonic market pressing for the version to be done well, unlike if I were having to source an obscure mid-European language version in order to satisfy my mother-tongue (and, therefore, ear).

That's, again, assuming they don't do the Science Ninja Team Gatchaman/Battle Of The Planets thing of basically rewriting the whole thing, and reordering/adding to, as a sop to 'Western' sensibilitiew. (7-Zark-7 added in to explain how all those planes and tanks being blown up by the Big Bad Mecha are robot planes and tanks... No humans were harmed during the making of this cartoon!)

1 Within the limits of the respective languages. I think there's the anecdote of Mel Brooks being personaly appealed to by prospective Italian dubbing guy to shoot a certain sequence in a long shot/over-the-shoulder, because there were multiple mentions of (IIRC) a pickle, in the English version, that would have been awkward to try to lip-synch with the Italian dub with the word (if 'pickle', then 'salamoia', it seems, which is bad enough, but makes me think it was actually a different pair with even more syllabic disparity) and maintain the scene, in head-on close-up.

2 It may even have US and Japanese recuttings (the British host, and separate resident ad-hoc record-breaker has for most of the show's run been joined by a US pair (host plus ad-hoc record-breaker) and a Japanese one (ditto). While branding those as visiting co-stars, with a bit of clever editing/retakes of intros and links, I'm sure they could produce a US-'homed' show with the British pair as guests, and ditto for Japan. If they don't, they've missed a trick.

jewish_scientist wrote:This seems to the general impression I get from the anime community. I have thought about it and cannot figure out why. As long as there is no censoring done, what is the difference?

Historically, there were some very popular anime with very bad dubs. Yu-Gi-Oh and One Piece was notorious for bad censorship and outright changing of the story for example.

But even in the 90s, there were good dubs. You just had to know which anime had dubs. For example, I'd argue that Cowboy Bebop has a better Dub than the sub, and most of the anime community seems to agree with me that the English Dub has superior actors. I've even seen claims that the Log Horizon English dub actually is slightly truer to the source material than the Log Horizon Japanese Sub. (Not that I've seen both, but... yeah). "Ghost Stories" wasn't my cup of tea, but anyone who actually likes the show wants to watch the English Dub and not the Japanese subtitles.

I also enjoyed "The Slayers" dub, which remained very true to the original (as well as handling some difficult to translate puns very well). Not every joke could translate "directly" into English, but the approach of the dubbing team was excellent.

With that said, it helps to remember the historical context of "bad dubs", often with the concept of "censorship". For example, the "One Piece" story has one character die... but the English dub "translated" the event over to "She got injured and could never do swordplay again". Apparently, the concept of death was too mature for the English audience so the 4kids dub changes the story. Ugggghhhhh....

The erasure of guns from Yu Gi Oh makes some scenes look completely ridiculous. The famous "Jump out a Window" scene makes sense in Japanese, when two goons jump into Seto Kaiba's room wielding guns. Seto Kaiba in Japanese says "You'll never take me alive" and jumps out the window.

In English... well... they erased the guns. Well, compared to the original subtitles anyway. For much of the subtitle community, the removal of guns in YuGiOh sorta made a lot of the action sequences make no fucking sense, and a lot of the dangerous parts of the show became more abstract.

There are good dubs (Cowboy Bebop being the canonical example, but Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water is also really good, Slayers is fun in that same cartoony way as the Pokemon dub, and Lost Universe is much funnier in English.) They're just vastly outweighed by the mediocre (Lucky Star,Azumanga Daioh,K-On! - all operating on the theory that the only thing you need for a high-school-girls-slice-of-life anime is actresses who can deliver in a really high but not squeaky voice, all other concerns secondary) or bad dubs.

"'Legacy code' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrupwww.commodorejohn.com - in case you were wondering, which you probably weren't.

Personally I've always preferred dubs with Anime (and subs with everything else), for the following reasons:1. It means I can actually look at the often beautiful artwork, rather than staring at the subs the whole time2. It reduces cognitive load - I find it harder to follow what's happening with subs, this was a problem with the Ghost in the Shell TV series as it's already pretty complex and difficult to follow

I'm not a huge Anime fan though admittedly, so I don't think I've come across a noticeably bad dub yet.

It's a lot easier/cheaper to make a decent sub than a decent dub - there are challenges with subtitles that don't exist with dubbing (generally you need to abbreviate dialogue in order to get through the subtitles in the same time the original speech took) but getting a good dub requires not only a good translator, but also good voice actors.

On the other hand, a subtitle does require your visual focus to be away from whatever else is happening on screen while you read the text, while a dubbed version lets you listen to the dialogue while also watching the action. Sometimes this is more significant than others - a lot of anime has a fairly low level of visual detail so it's fairly safe to use subtitles - but the effect is always there unless you're looking at a blank screen with a voiceover...

Anyway, the best dubs are better than the best subs, but mediocre subs are better than mediocre dubs.

I think most of the main points have been hit already, but my thoughts:

1. It's possible for a bad dub to ruin an otherwise good show, but it's extremely unlikely for a good dub to rescue a bad show (Ghost Stories and Samurai Pizza Cats both did it basically by turning the show into a parody of itself).

2. Going back even further than the One Piece and Yugioh examples, back in the 80s and 90s the shows would be completely rewritten to fit the Western TV production ideals. For example, three unrelated sci-fi series were edited to become a single continuity for Robotech because the individual shows were too short to sell for syndication, or something.

3. It's more likely that cultural references will be retained in the sub, but removed in the dub. For some shows, those cultural references are quite important to understanding why certain things happen the way they do. (I'm not surprised it took several years for Yokai Watch to be brought over, for example, because almost the entire premise of the show is rooted in Japanese folklore.)

4. It's hard enough to translate Japanese into English and still capture everything that's meant to be conveyed. But to do so in a way that vaguely resembles the mouth movements of the original Japanese is downright ridiculous - it's possible for a single word in Japanese to convey a whole sentence worth of information in English, and vice versa, but in dubs moreso than subs it's expected that sentences will take about the same time to say in either language so something's got to give.

ETA: Also, of course, it provides the anime nerds something to feel superior about in between arguments about who is best girl. Now if you'll excuse me, my waifu show is on.

Just like Flumble, English is a foreign language to me. No matter how good, I am not interested in watching dubs in a foreign language.

As for French dubs, some people claim that such and such series have very good dubs, and that we should watch them at least because the voice actors made such a good job, they sort of deserve their work to be watched. But I am not interested enough (and they are talking about old series that I have seen already). (And of course these guys would also discuss the French dubbing of American movies).

There is one dub I prefer over subs, and that is the DBZ latino dub. The actors are quite cool, especially the ones who voice Goku and Vegeta. Even the narrator sounds badass. Also I grew up with it.

One I grew up with that I'd watch the sub over is Rurouni Kenshin. Even though I enjoyed it plenty as a child, some things got mangled and I want to rewatch it with the original voices to hear and read what I missed.

Other than that, i just prefer reading to having to rewind because I misheard something, and most of the time I want to experience the original performances. Thats not to say all dubs are bad, as noted above.

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Weeks wrote:One I grew up with that I'd watch the sub over is Rurouni Kenshin. Even though I enjoyed it plenty as a child, some things got mangled and I want to rewatch it with the original voices to hear and read what I missed.

There were two dubs: the American English dub was actually decent. Indeed, I have very fond memories of the high quality opening dub translation, which preserved the meaning AND rhythm of the original Japanese song "Freckles".

The British Dub was titled "Samurai X" IIRC. The American Dub was titled "Rurouni Kenshin: Wandering Samurai". This gets confusing because the OVA was titled "Samurai X" and was pretty good...

The British English dub was pretty bad IMO. But then again, I grew up on the American English dub, so maybe I'm biased. I know about the British Dub mostly because I looked for the "Kenshin English Dub" for nostalgia and came across some crap where they couldn't pronounce anybody's name correctly.

The latino dub also called it "Samurai X". The largest difference I could tell from the brief bit of the original Japanese I've watched is Kenshin's voice, which in the original is quite high pitched and in the dub sounds a lot deeper. Same as Goku actually, but the Kenshin dub makes him sound kind of...weird? They do these bizarre grammar changes in an attempt to lip-synch, like repeating phrases or stopping mid-phrase, which made everyone sound like they were forgetting their lines or severely sleep-deprived, but it was most noticeable on Kenshin. That said I don't know why his voice is so high-pitched in the original either.

Sounds good in English though (despite not making much sense I guess?)

They didn't dub any Rurouni Kenshin music in the latino dub. Which is great because I love the originals. They did dub the DBZ music, but I think those were okay, so maybe dubbing the Kenshin music wouldn't have been bad. I probably would've loved it anyway.

TaintedDeity wrote:Tainted Deity

suffer-cait wrote:One day I'm gun a go visit weeks and discover they're just a computer in a trashcan at an ice cream shop.

Well, things are done a bit differently in Japan. IIRC, the songwriters have a bit more freedom and don't necessarily have to match the song to the story of the anime. The songwriters often also hold the copyrights, which is why a lot of Dubs can't use the original songs.

My interpretation of "Freckles" is that its about a girl who is sad because of a breakup. But this actually does apply to the plotline of Rurouni Kenshin quite well. Remember that its basically half a romance story between the accidental meeting of Kenshin and Kaoru (The other half being the action-driven battle sequences). Kenshin throughout the show is indeed settling down a bit as the romance between him an Kaoru forms up... but Kenshin's original mission was to wander the new age of Japan and atone for all the sins he committed during the great Civil War / Meiji era.

So despite the romance between Kenshin and Kaoru, Kenshin often is planning to get away from Kaoru and return to his walk of atonement. And indeed: Kenshin leaves Kaoru multiple times throughout the show, often to "clean up a mess" that relates to his chaotic past. If you consider the song's protagonist as Kaoru as she argues with herself whether or not to chase after Kenshin... the song actually makes a lot of sense.

The finale where Kaoru and Kenshin finally marry and have a happy life occurs in the Manga. The show may have been cancelled before it got there; but the evolution of Kaoru and Kenshin's relationship is as pivotal as any of the action scenes in that show... and ends up being the key to his ultimate atonement in the final battle (OVA / Manga only)

Weeks wrote:The latino dub also called it "Samurai X". The largest difference I could tell from the brief bit of the original Japanese I've watched is Kenshin's voice, which in the original is quite high pitched and in the dub sounds a lot deeper. Same as Goku actually, but the Kenshin dub makes him sound kind of...weird? They do these bizarre grammar changes in an attempt to lip-synch, like repeating phrases or stopping mid-phrase, which made everyone sound like they were forgetting their lines or severely sleep-deprived, but it was most noticeable on Kenshin. That said I don't know why his voice is so high-pitched in the original either.

That's not really a difference IMO. Maybe it wasn't done well in the Latino dub.

In the Japanese and English version, Kenshin has a lot of "catch-phrases" (Oro? Oro oro oro???), and repeats himself a lot in a cutesy manner. At least while he is in his "peaceful / comedic" personality.

Of course, the "suppressed" personality of the assassin lurks within Kenshin. And as that personality comes out, his catch-phrases disappear and his grammar slowly becomes more normal. In effect, the language quirks of "comedic Kenshin" help differentiate the two personalities.

I think it works in English because Yoda's broken English already set a standard for "Master of Swordsmanship with broken English". So most people who have seen say... Star Wars... see what the show is going for. After all, "Comedic" Kenshin is still a swordmaster. The main difference is that his bloodlust is kept in check in that personality. Ultimately: "Comedic" Kenshin most certainly does not speak normally in any version I'm aware of.

A side note / spoiler about Kenshin's personality:

Spoiler:

Its the reason why Kenshin carries the backwards blade "Sakabato". Because Kenshin knows that he slips into his assassin personality every now and then. So he wants his sword to give him a severe disadvantage: to give pause to his instinctive murderous personality. When you consider that Kenshin's style of swordplay is Battojutsu: the real life art of striking the instant you draw from the sheath... you can see why having a dull-edge face the opponent will prevent a kill.

I am not a Kendo / Battojutsu master, but if you've ever tried to draw a sword from a sheath... you'll know that it ain't easy. Often times, your blade gets tangled on the draw and you sorta fumble around. So being able to draw-and-strike in one smooth motion requires a decent amount of practice.

Kenshin notes all sorts of disadvantages with the dull edge in the Manga. How it catches on the sheath and slows down his strikes for example... while his older edged blades would more smoothly come out of the sheath.

My hearing is bad. I hear that things are being said, but I struggle to make out the details without the added information I get from watching people's mouths (unless people have very clear enunciation or I can turn the volume up to ridiculous levels). When things are dubbed I hear that there are noises, but the noises don't make sense and I can't make out the details of what's being said. I hear that things are being said, and I can deduce things from the tone of voice, but it's extremely grating. With subtitles that problem is gone. I can read what's being said and I'm so used to it that I don't really notice it's there.

Also English isn't my native language. To me, English dubs just seem intensely cheesy and turn otherwise good shows into cringefests. And dubs in my native language (Norwegian) are all done by the same 5 people and they replace all emotion with shouting, which is just annoying.

I started watching the Digimon for the 3rd time, except this time I am using the sub instead of the dub. One of the things that instantly stood out to me is that some of the jokes were better in the dub.

Example:

Spoiler:

The DigiDestined found several phone booths on the beach

Sub Mimi: They look like the ones next to my house. Joe: Which means... Joe: We must still be in Japan! Gomamon: Japan? Joe, what's that? Joe: ... Joe: Or maybe not.

Dub Sora: So the question is why are these phone booths on the beach? Joe: So people can call their parents for a ride home! Gomamon: Parents? What exactly is a 'parents''? Joe: ... Joe: That's it. I'm out of here.

Another case:

Spoiler:

After just entering the Digital World

Sub Izzy:The plants seems to be subtropical. Tentomon: I agree. Izzy: You know what I am talking about? Tentomon: No idea.

Dub Izzy: We do not even know which way is North. Tentomon: I know! Izzy: Where is it? Tentomon: It's the opposite of South.

However, sometimes the dub's jokes fall flat. In the sub, when the Tia is introducing the kids to the Digimon he says each person's name, a fact about them, and then the person says their name again. The dub wanted to remove this needless repetition, so they replaced each person's line with a joke; watching the scene is kind of painful. In general though, the dub seems to be funnier.

I think that the translators acted like a second set of writers who treat the the Japanese version as a draft they were told to edit. Sometimes that add whole new story elements, like Izzy's theory about the aliens.

"You are not running off with Cow-Skull Man Dracula Skeletor!" -Socrates

One thing you have to remember is that subtitles are allowed to basically translate the source material as exactly as possible...

Dubbed dialog has to get the point across while taking roughly the same amount of speaking time.

Hence the translation difficulty. If a language has a word that doesn't exist in another language, a subtitle can just use the wordier description. Dubs can't do that.

On both cases, though, they have to translate idioms. If you were translating the idiom of "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise" you have to express the notion of "Yes" said in a lengthy rural manner, which also means you need to figure out just how the hell to make it obvious this person is rural in some way. Subtitle could just translate that as "Yes I will" while a dub has a hell of a lot of talking to deal with.

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Grop wrote:I said this before in an other thread, but then you also have the cases where the dubs are quite funny (if not very respectful of the original thing).

Ghost Stories is one of the best examples of a Gag Dub, but didn't seem to be mentioned there (although I mentioned it earlier). The original Japanese was kind of awful as a show goes. The group is attacked by a ghost piano for crying out loud.

However, when you add "Gag Dubs" to the mix, getting attacked by a ghost-piano is downright hilarious, and the show becomes quite watchable. Some things are good if you make fun of them.

That page does have lots of good examples I forgot: Hitalia and Samurai Pizza Cats. Apparently, Digimon is considered a gag-dub, since they added a lot of jokes to the English version that didn't exist in the Japanese. They respect the main story, just add jokes and stuff to make the show more watchable.

Still though, the original Digimon Japanese opening was far superior to the English one. "Butterfly" is a good song IMO. I do get some nostalgia from the English opening, but its very... cringeworthy. Its totally a 90s "Repeat the title over and over again" opening taken to the max.

SecondTalon wrote:One thing you have to remember is that subtitles are allowed to basically translate the source material as exactly as possible...

Dubbed dialog has to get the point across while taking roughly the same amount of speaking time.

Hence the translation difficulty. If a language has a word that doesn't exist in another language, a subtitle can just use the wordier description. Dubs can't do that.

On both cases, though, they have to translate idioms. If you were translating the idiom of "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise" you have to express the notion of "Yes" said in a lengthy rural manner, which also means you need to figure out just how the hell to make it obvious this person is rural in some way. Subtitle could just translate that as "Yes I will" while a dub has a hell of a lot of talking to deal with.

Subtitles have more leeway to mess with length - in particular, they can steal time one character spends speaking to let the viewer read another character's words. On the other hand, if you've ever watched an English language film with English subtitles, you'd know that the subtitles rarely include every word characters say even when only one person is speaking at a given moment. So, sometimes, a subtitle can use a long phrase in place of a short one, but mostly it has to paraphrase down.

Subtitles in anime w/the original Japanese dialogues just... seems to impart more of the emotions the animes' creators likely intended. Hearing the original Japanese voice actors and actresses just... feels more natural to watching the product of another country. I don't NEED IT to be Americanized to enjoy it. I don't need the women to have less high pitched voices, or the men to sound all gravely and just. American dialogues on Japanese animes turns me way, way off. A only problem I have is: Reading the texts of the dialogues as they go by too, way too fast, and I can't keep track of what everybody wanna say to each other when I have to read And Watch at the same times. </3

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